Archive for Teams

For two or three days, I’ve been sitting around, waiting for the Nationals to make a big trade. This isn’t the one I was expecting, but, the hell with it, as long as I’m here anyway, the Nationals have picked up Derek Norris from the Padres, at the cost of Pedro Avila. Avila is as 19 as any other 19-year-old, and last year he was fine as a low-level starting pitcher. You know the rest of this. Intriguing stuff, many years away. I will not be discussing Avila again in this post.

Norris is the more interesting of the two. The Nationals wanted a catcher to pair with Jose Lobaton, and Norris can slide right in for cheap. The Nationals will have him for two years if they want, and this year he’ll cost about $4 million. Not much. But, the thing I didn’t expect: Norris was baseball’s worst hitter last season.

That is, if you go by results, and if you set a minimum of 400 plate appearances. The minimum is arbitrary, so, you might say someone else was worse. But Norris did the least with the most playing time. I’m not sure how that escaped my attention as it was playing out, but actually, yes, I am sure how, because Norris played for the Padres, and why would I have been paying attention to them? Norris was dreadful, as you can see in this table.

He finished 203rd out of 203. It was an extremely brutal offensive season, and, related to that, Norris had a career-worst strikeout rate. Yet, it wasn’t all terrible. Fancy yourself an optimist? I like to subtract soft-hit rate from hard-hit rate. Here is a selection from that leaderboard, with the same 400-PA minimum.

No one’s impressed by being close to Marwin Gonzalez, but, Anthony Rizzo? Robinson Cano? Carlos Santana? Wilson Ramos was actually right after Cano. By this measure alone, Norris’ contact was just like Ramos’ contact. The point being, Norris didn’t fall completely apart. He can still sting the baseball, and his career wRC+ is almost league-average. The Nationals assume there’ll be a bounceback, just as Ramos’ three-year wRC+ marks went from 93 to 63 to 124. Like Norris, the bad, 2015 version of Ramos had a career-high strikeout rate. Last year he was one of the Nationals’ more valuable players.

And Baseball Prospectus also considers Norris something of a defensive plus. While he’s not much for throwing out runners, Norris has put together two strong years of receiving, and it stands to reason that should continue into Washington. Acknowledging that we have no idea if Norris actually calls a good game — he seems above-average defensively, and at the plate, he’s been above-average before. This is a pretty painless buy-low, even if it seemingly removes the Nationals from the justifiably perplexing Ramos free-agent sweepstakes. His tale is a sad one, but the Nationals had to move on.

From the Padres’ perspective, easy space has been cleared for Austin Hedges, who deserves this opportunity. And for Norris, while he still won’t be a full-time catcher, at least now his 2017 job share will come with a contender instead of with a rebuilder. That’s not bad news to take a man into a weekend.

While everyone else basks in the glow of continued labor peace and begins to explore the minutia of the latest pact between the league and its players, the Yankees remain committed to a PR campaign against the collective bargaining agreement and its (negative) influence on the team’s ability to compete. The latest critique comes courtesy New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman in a piece from George King III of the New York Post.

We’ll get to that in a moment. Before we do, though, we should acknowledge that, yes, the Yankees pay a substantial amount both in revenue sharing and luxury tax. Yankees president Randy Levine indicated that the former obligation was $90 million in 2015 — from a combination both of the standard 34% revenue sharing and also a performance factor, explained in greater depth here by Wendy Thurm. As a result of these obligations, the Yankees are giving more money back to small-market teams than any other club in baseball. Add in more than $300 million in luxury-tax/competitive-balance penalties over the last decade, and it’s pretty easy to see the Yankees’ grounds for dissent.

That’s not the real cause of the Yankees’ failure to dominate in recent seasons, however. Rather, poor spending and failed player development have been the team’s main issues.

But back to Cashman, for a moment. In his recent comments, he was unambiguous about the effect that the last few CBAs have had on his club.

“The CBA is going to affect us in the long term,” general manager Brian Cashman said Tuesday at Yankees scout Cesar Presbott’s Thanksgiving turkey giveaway in The Bronx. “It’s already crippled us in the short term. Exhibit A is our free agency last year and a lot of the international markets I’ve been taken out of.

“The previous CBAs have really hindered us, so I think the next one is something we’re clearly going to be interested in on how it will impact us over the entire course of the term of the contract. The previous ones have impacted us in a bad way.”

As noted above, the Yankees have been compelled to contribute quite a bit in revenue sharing, etc. — ultimately paying out probably more than a billion dollars directly to their competitors over the last decade. It’s not that simple, though.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Diego Padres. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Chicago NL / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Were one to have followed major-league baseball with some vigor through the 2014 season but then entered a coma at the end of that season but then just exited that coma this morning, that would constitute an unsual series of events. It would also uniquely qualify the nearly awakened to comment on the relative inexperience of the Padres’ starting lineup, because basically none of that lineup’s constituent members had appeared in major-league baseball by the end of 2014.

Catcher Derek Norris (450 PA, 1.7 zWAR), who’s recorded fewer than 600 career games (or less than four full seasons’ worth), is the veteran of this club. Wil Myers (621, 3.4) and Yangervis Solarte (519, 2.5) are the only other two projected starters who’ve recorded more than 1,000 career plate appearances. The starting outfielders, meanwhile, have compiled 552 PAs as a group.

Which, a note about San Diego and its outfields. The reader might remember, in 2015, when the Padres fielded an Opening Day alignment (from left to right field) of Justin Upton, Wil Myers, and Matt Kemp, marking one of the worst defensive units in recent memory. The results were not positive. In any case, the current iteration of the Padres outfield represents a great departure from that. Travis Jankowski (404, 1.6) and Manuel Margot (581, 2.6) are projected for +7 and +9 fielding runs in center; Hunter Renfroe (586, 1.5), meanwhile, is forecast to save +6 runs in right.

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The St. Louis Cardinals sent lefty Jaime Garcia to Atlanta in exchange for a trio of minor leaguers this evening. Below are my thoughts on the prospects heading to St. Louis in the deal.

John Gant, RHP (Profile)

The good-bodied and eccentric Gant is probably the likeliest to yield big-league value of the triumvirate acquired by St. Louis tonight. He’s already spent time there, having thrown 50 major-league innings in 2016. As a rookie, Gant struck out nearly a batter per inning (recording a 22% strikeout rate) but also struggled with walks (9.5%). Gant’s fastball sits in the low 90s, mostly 90-93, but will touch as high as 96 and has a slightly above-average spin rate. His changeup is his best secondary offering and best pitch overall. It’s a plus, low-80s cambio that disappears away from lefties as it approaches the plate. Gant maintains his fastball’s arm speed throughout release. There are times when Gant makes a visible effort to create extra movement on the pitch, alters his arm action, and causes his change to flatten out. He also has a loopy, below-average mid-70s curveball. He’s had to use the curve more frequently than a pitch of this quality usually warrants in order to navigate his way through minor-league lineups multiple times.

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The Braves’ first few moves of the 2016-17 offseason — and, in particular, the acquisitions of both Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey — appeared to raise the floor for an Atlanta club team designed to survive, if not necessarily thrive in, 2017. The club’s most recent move might not help raise that floor any higher. What it could do, however, is heighten the team’s ceiling — and, at the very least, provide the club with an interesting trade chip for the July trade deadline.

Earlier tonight, the Braves traded three prospects to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for Jaime Garcia, who enters the final season of an extension signed back in 2011.

Here’s the trade in full.

Braves Receive:

• Jaime Garcia

Cardinals Receive:

• 2B Luke Dykstra
• RHP Chris Ellis
• RHP John Gant

When healthy, Garcia has been an effective pitcher. Over the course of his career, he’s produced a better-than-average FIP and ERA (both 8% lower than league average). Staying on the mound for any length of time has been the issue for Garcia, however. After recording 194 innings in 2011 — and earning a four-year contract extension (with two options) along the way — Garcia struggled to stay healthy. He managed only 220 innings over the next three seasons combined and began 2015 on the disabled list. His numbers were never particularly bad during that span — and were, in some cases, quite good. After thoracic outlet surgery in the middle of 2014, however, his career appeared to be in some jeopardy.

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To be clear, there are two job postings here.

Position: Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Research & Development Intern

Location: Milwaukee
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Sort this year’s free-agent corner outfielders by last year’s production, and Angel Pagan’s name appears right at the top of the list. Sort that same list by projected production, however, and Pagan falls to seventh best, right behind the recently signed Matt Joyce. We all know how projections work: at the most basic level, they’re the product of past performance and age. For most veteran players, those two variables conspire to create a pretty dependable vision of the future.

Pagan has proven to be a difficult case for projection systems, however. He’s been particularly volatile over the course of his career — specifically with regard to his offensive production. If we could identify the causes of that volatility, perhaps we could improve upon the vision of Pagan’s future provided by the projections. And along the way, we might find him the right team.

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Some people track the passing of time through watching their children. Other people track the passing of time by looking at what time it is, and comparing that to a previous time, from back in the past. I tend to track the passing of time by thinking in baseball terms. I can’t really help it, and sometimes it takes me by surprise. It feels like just yesterday that Billy Hamilton was one of the most exciting and polarizing prospects in the sport. Now Hamilton is the subject of some trade rumors, because he’s entering his arbitration years and the Reds aren’t going to be good any time soon. Life comes at you fast. (Faster than Billy Hamilton!) (But not actually that fast.)

I don’t need to explain Hamilton to anybody. At least, not anybody on FanGraphs. Runs fast, doesn’t hit. It feels like a somewhat typical profile. Maybe thinking about Hamilton causes you to think about Willy Taveras. We’ve all seen players kind of like this. I’d like to demonstrate that Hamilton is particularly extreme. While Hamilton has maybe disappointed a few observers, he’s been his own sort of player.

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On paper, it’s hard to see Jon Jay as any sort of upgrade for the defending World Champion Chicago Cubs. Prior to the one-year, $8-million agreement between Jay and the club, our Depth Chart projections featured Jason Heyward as the recipient of the majority of the team’s center-field plate appearances, with Kyle Schwarber receiving most of the time in left, Ben Zobrist in right, and Jorge Soler serving as a backup at each of the latter two positions. Adding Jay, moving Heyward from center to right, giving Zobrist the majority of time at second base, and forecasting fewer plate appearances for Javier Baez (who had appeared as the starting second baseman on the depth charts previous to the acquisition of Jay) does little to help Chicago’s projections. That said, the acquisition probably does have benefit for the 2017 club — even if the abundance of outfielders ultimately serves to diminish the trade value both of Soler and Albert Almora.

Despite his otherworldly defense in right field, Heyward doesn’t seem to be an ideal fit in center. While he can handle the position, the Cubs have appeared unwilling to make him the starter there. They re-signed Dexter Fowler to avoid that scenario this past year and were likely always going to find a replacement for Fowler this offseason. The addition of Jay gives them the opportunity to deploy a platoon in center now, with Jay handling the lefty side of things and a 23-year-old Almora taking a couple hundred plate appearances from the right. That’s a sensible solution. As sensible as it is, though, some questions remain regarding the Cubs outfield.

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Pitching coordinators play an important role. They oversee development throughout their respective club’s minor-league system, roving between affiliates to ensure that organizational philosophies — many of which they’ve had a hand in designing — are being followed. Their responsibilities extend to the individual arms, as well. Each pitcher has a player plan, and the coordinators are expected to optimize his chances of making it to the big leagues.

Ron Roenicke isn’t a pitching coordinator. Nor is Erik Bennett. But both have up-close familiarity with what the position entails. Roenicke — currently on Mike Scioscia’s staff in Anaheim — has coached and managed in both the major and minor leagues since 1992. Bennett has been a pitching coach in the Angels system since 2003, most recently at the Triple-A level. He spent the bulk of the 2016 season in the big leagues, filling in for bullpen coach Scott Radinsky, who was recovering from a medical procedure.

Roenicke and Bennett shared their insight on the roles and responsibilities of pitching coordinators this past summer.

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Ron Roenicke: “The coordinators are obviously important. The pitching coach at the level a player is at is probably even more important. He’s going to be building a relationship with the guy. He’s going to know his head — what he’s thinking about — and what his positives are, on a daily basis. The coordinators — at least the good ones — will go in and take what the coach gives them, and they’ll watch to see the difference between spring training and that specific time.

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